{"id":36906,"date":"2024-03-20T17:22:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T00:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36906"},"modified":"2024-04-17T19:22:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T02:22:33","slug":"an-angry-pink-cow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/an-angry-pink-cow\/","title":{"rendered":"An Angry Pink Cow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Name a food with a hole in it<\/em>\u2026\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Did you say donuts, cheese, onion rings, bagels? Do you think your answer would match with everyone else\u2019s? If so, you are in the herd; if not, you are the odd one out. Welcome to the game Herd Mentality. It’s a group game my family has enjoyed playing this past year. The aim of the game is simple: think like the herd and write down the answers you think everyone else will have. If your answer is part of the majority, you all win cows (points). If your answer is the odd one out, you get the angry Pink Cow, and your points are only good once someone else gets the Pink Cow. Excitement happens when everyone reveals their answer to the prompt. A chorus of laughter and unbelief sounds forth. Some people rationalize their answers, while others say, \u201cI can\u2019t believe you put that!\u201d It\u2019s a game that challenges our perception of what is obvious. It highlights how far off we can be in our assumptions of what other people think, what is expected, and what is considered \u201cnormal.\u201d In his book Why We Are Wrong About Nearly Everything [1], Bobby Duffy addresses the reality of human misunderstanding and misperceptions. In this post, I will examine one key distinction and consider a couple of takeaways from his book.<\/p>\n

Ignorance or Delusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since 2012, Ipsos has been exploring the gap between people\u2019s perceptions and reality. On their website [2], you can find the full Perils of Perception survey results, which include data from 40 countries and 200,000 interviews. In his book, Duffy explains, \u201cThe focus of these studies is not primarily to root out ignorance so much as to discover delusions.\u201d[3] Duffy contends that a necessary differentiation between delusion and ignorance needs to be understood. It is a delicate but essential line of distinction. Ignorance is the state of not knowing something. Delusion, however, is a state of misunderstanding reality. Thinking you believe is true, while it is false. This distinction sets the stage for the rest of the book. In a winsome and clever way, he invites the reader into an awareness of delusion that I found rather disarming.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I appreciate the invitation Duffy offers to be mindful of 5 things as you explore the delusions and reasons behind them throughout the book:<\/p>\n

1. Many of us get a lot of basic social and political facts very wrong.
\n2. What we get wrong is as much about how we think as what we\u2019re told\u2014which means, as much as we\u2019d like to, we can\u2019t merely blame the media, social media, or politicians for our mistaken beliefs; we need to look at the whole system, including our own faulty thinking.
\n3. Our delusions are often biased in particular directions, because our emotional responses influence our perceptions of reality. Our delusions, therefore, provide valuable clues that we shouldn\u2019t just laugh at or ignore.
\n4. More than this, our delusions can in turn shape social and political realities. They have serious consequences for so many aspects of our lives, from political outcomes, social cohesion, to our own health and finances.
\n5. Acknowledging the complexity and scale of the problem is our only real chance to deal with our delusions, individually and collectively. [4]<\/p>\n

Inviting to be mindful of these 5 things is an invitation to humility. Admitting we are wrong is a key step in accepting the distinction between ignorance and delusion. It\u2019s forgoing the pleasure of being right and facing the displeasure of being wrong. It confronts our feeling of being smart, competent, trustworthy, and in tune with our environment.[5] While admitting vulnerability, we have the strength and freedom of an undefended leader, as described by Simon Walker.[6]<\/p>\n

Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n

If I had more space, I would enjoy unpacking a few other concepts Duffy introduces, like all the factors that shape the entire system of delusion and the theory of \u201cSocial Enumeracy,\u201d or the way we filter the world through the \u201cFalse Consensus Effect.\u201d As it is, I have a couple of takeaways that Duffy offers in chapter eleven, \u201cDealing with our Delusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duffy demonstrates that there is no single cause for our delusions. They emerge from a complex system of forces, both internal and external. He suggests using a technique first introduced by Daniel Kahneman, \u201cSlow Thinking.\u201d [7] If we become aware of a biased or misunderstood perception, we can shift to slow thinking, seek to understand the source of the bias, and perhaps reconsider.<\/p>\n

A second takeaway that accompanies the first is to accept the emotion but challenge the thought. As stated earlier, learning you are wrong can trigger several emotions. Ignoring the feelings won’t be productive when discovering a misunderstanding or wrong perception; understanding them will. Separating emotion from thought will allow for critical thinking and create a path toward creator awareness. Employing a more contemplative \u201dSlow Thinking\u201d approach allows us to temper what might be a more emotional and immediate \u201cFast Thinking\u201d response.
\n\"\"When confronted with the reality that we can be delusional, we might feel like the odd one out, the “Angry Pink Cow,” but Duffy clarifies that our delusions are more in line with the herd than we might realize.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

[1] Bobby Duffy, <\/span>Why We Are Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding, <\/span><\/i>(New York, NY: Basic Books, 2019).<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Accessed 03-20-2024,\u00a0https:\/\/www.ipsos.com\/en\/perils.<\/p>\n

[3] \u00a0Bobby Duffy, <\/span>Why We are Wrong About Nearly Everything,<\/span><\/i>13<\/span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

[4] Bobby Duffy, <\/span>Why We are Wrong About Nearly Everything, <\/span><\/i>23-24.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5] \u00a0Kathryn Schulz, <\/span>Being Wrong<\/span><\/i>,(New York, NY: Harper Collins, 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6] Simon Walker, <\/span>The Undefended Leader<\/span><\/i>, (Piquant Editions, 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

[7] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>, (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Name a food with a hole in it\u2026 Did you say donuts, cheese, onion rings, bagels? Do you think your answer would match with everyone else\u2019s? If so, you are in the herd; if not, you are the odd one out. Welcome to the game Herd Mentality. It’s a group game my family has enjoyed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2640,2967],"class_list":["post-36906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-duffy","tag-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36906"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37593,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36906\/revisions\/37593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}